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Mystery of the Mary Celeste
The Mary Celeste departed New York harbor on 5 November 1872 with ten souls aboard and carrying 1,709 barrels of grain alcohol. Bound for Genoa, Italy, she was captained by Benjamin S. Briggs, an experienced and capable mariner who was so confident of his ship and crew-of-seven that he brought along his wife, Sarah Elizabeth, and their second child, a two-year-old baby girl, Sophia. Twenty days out, on the morning of 25 November, the Mary Celeste passed through the just north of . Her course from 5 AM to 8 AM is plotted in the image, here. A somewhat shorter route to the would have taken her south of this island, known then as Saint Mary’s. But they had just come through days of some very rough weather, with rain and gale force winds that persisted even on the afternoon of their final day. By passing to the north of Saint Mary’s, they came around to the lee side of the island, where, at 8 AM, fairly shielded from the winds, they could linger a bit and give a respite to the crew and to the mother and baby. Perhaps they even fired up the ship’s stove to enjoy a hot meal, a cooked breakfast for the first time in days. The last log entry was at that time, 8 AM, 25 November 1872, at the place marked with a black X, six miles east of the northern portion of Saint Mary’s Island. There, some catastrophe occurred. The ship’s compass was knocked over; the compass stand was broken and the compass destroyed. The cast iron galley stove went up out of the four heavy chocks that had secured each leg, and it fell to the galley floor In evident haste, all left their personal belongings and abandoned the ship into the single life boat, a . But they first tied the yawl to the Mary Celeste using a long stretch of rope. This is known, not from the log, which contained no entries about any misfortune, but from the following facts. The evidence Nine days later, on the 4th of December, another cargo ship from New York, the Dei Gratia, came upon the Mary Celeste midway between the Azores and Portugal. She had been drifting for those 9 days. Crew from the Dei Gratia ''boarded the ''Mary Celeste and found "a thoroughly wet mess." Two hatches were open on deck. Neither was an entrance to the main cargo hold. The main cargo hatch was well secured. Water was everywhere, a foot deep near the galley; even the Captain’s unmade bed was soaked. The and the upper were mostly blown away. The main was lying loose on the forward house and all the rest of the sails were furled. This meant the catastrophe may have happened just as sailors were setting the foresail and upper and lower topsail to get underway. It seems likely that whatever force destroyed the compass and dislodged the stove would have thrown working sailors from the rigging to the deck or into the sea. And the yawl, the life boat, was missing. A section of railing had been removed, which allowed launching of the boat over the side. Deep cuts were found on top of the ship’s main cargo hatch and on a wooden railing. Someone had probably used an ax to cut the yawl loose from atop the main hatch (rather than take the time to untie it), and an axe, also, on the railing, to cut the ship’s main peak halyard. A long stretch of rope – probably the main peak halyard, which was missing from where it should have been – was found trailing behind the Mary Celeste, one end tied securely to the rail, the other end floating in the water, badly frayed. The yawl itself – nor any survivor – was never found. The rope that had secured the yawl to the ship had evidently snapped, perhaps in a sudden swell, or perhaps when the yawl capsized and sank. Tying a life boat to its ship would make sense in the case of a fire burning out of control on a wooden ship. Once the fire had burnt itself out, the crew, safe aboard the life boat, could then re-board the ship and salvage what was left. But there was no fire aboard the Mary Celeste. Had anything at all been burned, this would have been obvious. Nothing was even singed. Whatever catastrophe it was, did not include a fire burning at all, much less out of control. Had they all just finished a meal? Contrary to legend, no half-eaten food was found, and all dishes were actually clean and properly stowed away, so it cannot be said with certainty that the stove had even been fired up that morning, and, if it had been fired, it would surely have been extinguished by the time all the dishes were put away. There was a particularly odd discovery made later, well after crew of Dei Gratia had safely sailed the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar to claim a salvage reward. Upon unloading her apparently undamaged cargo, inspectors discovered that nine of the barrels of alcohol were empty. These were the only red-oak barrels among the 1,709 in the hold; the others were of white oak and less porous. This alcohol was industrial and not at all suitable for human consumption (so legend about drunken sailors being at fault is easily debunked; the crew had sterling reputations; the Captain was a teetotaler and would not have tolerated drunkenness even had there been any store of consumable alcohol, which there was not). These barrels had either slowly leaked their contents over the course of the month, or they had been breached by the catastrophe of 25 November. The mystery Any number of catastrophes could have happened at sea. A rogue wave. A sudden, unexpected storm. A tornado-like water-spout. Even perhaps an explosion of alcohol fumes within the hold. A loud, violent, but low-heat fume explosion could have terrified the crew without starting a fire. Those are all possibilities, except for a troubling problem. Why, aboard a seaworthy vessel in bad weather, did the Captain and his crew and his wife with a baby choose to abandon their ship and take to a precarious lifeboat? It is maxim of the sea that a large ship is by far the safest place in almost any emergency. In a small boat the risk of capsizing or drifting endlessly and starving is far too great. The Mary Celeste held a 6-months’ supply of food, and she was eminently sailable, as the crew of the Del Gratia discovered. She was never on fire. She was never sinking. So how can the decision to abandon her in haste, even temporarily, possibly be explained? One noteworthy explanation is the modern account by a sailor, Captain Dave Williams, from whose research and analysis Web site DeafWhale.com/Mary Celeste most of the above has been drawn. It was a , Williams proposed. The Azores are in a seismically active region. Shock waves from a powerful seaquake beneath the Mary Celeste would have pounded her from the bottom, tossing the vessel violently up and down, with audible booms as she left the water and slammed back. This, Williams’ postulates, spilled and broke the compass and threw the stove from its chocks, perhaps sending ash and burning embers everywhere. At the same time, the nine barrels of alcohol ruptured in the hold, spilling their contents into the bilge-water and sending powerful fumes aloft. Captain Briggs would have feared an explosion of his dangerous cargo at any moment. He chose the lifeboat as a way to separate himself, his wife, his baby, and his crew from this imminent danger. That’s why they abandoned ship in such haste. And after that, whether the life boat capsized and the rope broke, or whether instead Captain Briggs just decided against re-boarding, cut the rope with an axe, and tried to reach Saint Mary’s in the life boat (a theory recently put forward by the Smithsonian Institution), are things unknowable and immaterial. It was fear of explosion that drove them into the life boat. The mystery has been solved! Or has it? When you eliminate the impossible There are insurmountable flaws in Williams’ theory. All dishes were cleaned and stowed, so if the crew earlier had their meal and were busy getting underway, why was the stove still fired? And the barrels Captain Williams supposes were suddenly breached by the shaking of the ship were never reported to have been broken or damaged in any way. They were only reported to be empty. As the only red oak barrels in the hold, they were too porous for the liquid they were suppose to contain, and so they were probably leaking the whole trip. It seems impossible that only those particular barrels among the 1,709 would have been “suddenly breached” in a violent shaking. No barrels at all were found dislodged or cracked. When discovered at sea and when offloaded in port, the cargo and its containers were said to be in excellent condition. But the truly insurmountable flaw is that we must suppose, as Captain Williams himself supposes, that Captain Briggs and his crew were in a state of panic that critically impaired their judgment. Lowering a life boat and getting everyone into it would have required minutes of work, when at any second the explosion that they supposedly feared might occur; while in the meantime, simply dousing the stove and the embers with water and ventilating the hold so fumes do not accumulate would have taken just a few seconds. So surely they had done these things already! Surely the cook and sailors would have doused the dislodged stove with water to prevent fire – if indeed the stove had ever even been fired up. Surely if they smelled fumes they had already opened hatches to ventilate. And why on earth would they not open the main hatch itself for that purpose? The danger of an explosion would have already passed, no matter what they did, long before they ever managed to get the lifeboat into the water, and themselves into the lifeboat. Captain Briggs, some say, was a man “afraid of his cargo,” and so perhaps he was merely exercising an “abundance of caution.” But that makes little sense given that this brand of "caution" ended up killing them all. Briggs allowed the stove to be used and allowed pipe smoking aboard the vessel (sailors’ pipes were among the personal belongings left behind), so he was not overly concerned about the possibility of an explosion. As has already been noted, he was so confident of his ship’s and cargo’s safety that he had even brought along his wife and baby. So how could this same confident man possibly have feared an explosion some minutes after a stove was upset in the galley? If drifting embers were going to cause an explosion of built-up fumes, that explosion would have happened already, while embers still had real life in them, not minutes later. So how could the emergency have still been so extreme that the Captain would order all to abandon the seaworthy ship in the midst of seaquake or rogue waves or rough seas or water-spouts or whatever other violence had put them in peril? Leaving a large ship for a small boat in treacherous seas out of such fear is something that no experienced sea Captain would do. It’s simply impossible that Briggs would have abandoned his ship, especially during a natural catastrophe, unless for some sensible reason he had no other choice. The impossible eliminated, what remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The Captain obviously did fear his ship was in imminent danger. But danger from where? Not from an upset galley stove and dissipating fumes within the ship itself. Such a threat, so near at hand on board, would have been easily controllable while on board. So the danger had to have been coming from without. Whatever remains Now then, what sort of threat, coming from the outside, would make a small boat a safer place to be than a large ship? Well, there is only one such outside threat as far as I know (and if you can think of another, please do tell!): an attack from enemy warships or coastal artillery. This may sound absurd, given the peaceful time and place, but let’s consider it for just a moment. Suppose that the Mary Celeste was under attack by enemy firing cannon. What would the crew have done? They could not return fire; they had no cannon of their own. Sails were not set, so they could not flee. The enemy – well armed pirates perhaps, or some nation’s warships mistaking the Mary Celeste for an enemy – was far away, in the cover of bad weather, so they could not signal surrender. At any second a shell of this attack might rupture the hold and explode their cargo of alcohol. Now, in this circumstance, there was indeed no other choice. Given that their cargo was volatile – and with shells whizzing overhead and splashing and exploding nearby – they could not afford to wait for a direct hit. If they were to have any chance at all of surviving, they had to separate themselves from the target of the attack. Well, now, was there anything in that November of 1872, or in the condition of the Mary Celeste, that could account for or suggest an unprovoked attack on a merchant vessel lingering in the Azores? Pirates had threatened the Azores once, but there were no reports of pirating in recent years. The Portuguese on Saint Mary’s had some forts, and some cannon, but they had no reason to attack anyone. The world was at peace. The nearest conflict of any note was far away, a civil war in Spain. And there was no evidence of an attack in the condition of the Mary Celeste. All things on board were undisturbed, aside from the broken compass and the dislodged stove. The cargo was intact. Personal belongings were in place. There was no physical damage to the ship itself, other than the cuts found on top of the main hatch and the railing. Some of the sails were torn, but those sails had not been properly lashed, and so had been flailing in the wind for days. So, then, there was no attack. But, if an attack by cannon fire is the only threat that could reasonably account for the decision to abandon ship, then we ought to ask ourselves, is there any phenomenon at all, especially in the historical record of that particular November, that could reasonably have been mistaken for an attack? Though astronomically improbable Ah! There is, indeed, one such rare phenomenon! As fate would have it, unusual conditions for this particular phenomenon were not only present at the time of the Mary Celeste’s voyage, but they were nearing their height on 25 November 1872, the very same day that she met with disaster. That November was the very first occurrence – and the 25th to the 30th was the peak period – of the Andromedids. What on earth is that, you ask? Well, it is not exactly a thing on earth. The Andromedids are meteor showers that produced spectacular displays in November 1872 and November 1885. They are associated with the remains of comet 3D/Biela, which had broken into two pieces some 30 years prior, and which later vanished entirely. At the height of the 1872 Andromedids, particles were entering the earth’s atmosphere at an astounding rate. Scientists observing the skies over France said it "seemed a real rain of fire," with 400 fireballs lighting the sky every 90 seconds, or some 33,400 during a 6 1/2 hour period. This was on the 27th of November, just 2 days after the last log entry of the Mary Celeste. No of this shower struck the earth as far as is known. But meteorites do strike the earth, of course, on average about 500 times a year. Perhaps a large meteor of this particularly stupendous month-long shower did indeed reach the surface of the earth somewhere, if not on land, then at sea. Consider, now, what happens when a stony portion of a comet that is large enough to strike the surface of the earth enters and passes through the atmosphere. It breaks into large pieces due to thermal shock. The flash of the fireball is followed by the cannon-like sounds of “boom!”, “boom-boom!”, “boom-boom-boom-boom!”, “boom!” as successively the larger fragments explode apart into smaller pieces. These mid-air explosions cause dispersion of material over a large, oval-shaped area. In the town of Pułtusk, about 37 miles northeast of Warsaw, Poland, on 30 January 1868, “thousands of people witnessed a large fireball followed by detonations and a very large shower of small fragments falling on ice, land and houses within an area of about 127 sq km. The estimated number of fragments was 68,780. The fragments ranged in weight from half a gram to 9.095 kg (the largest specimen). The overall estimated mass of the meteorites was 8,863 kg.” Pultusk_(meteorite), Wikipedia Nearly 10 miles away, in a suburb of Krakow, a witness was “astonished by the suddenly appearing bright illumination of the objects around him.”NASA Astrophysics Data System, Meteor observed on January 30, 1868, at Pultusk, Poland (translated by W. H. Haas), Galle, J. G., pg. 44-45 He turned toward the light and saw a streaking fireball that was “suddenly dispersed into a great quantity of spark-shaped, shining points of light.” Some 3½ minutes later came “a thunder-like noise, lasting for a couple seconds, and thereafter a terrible crackling report, much louder than that of a cannon.” And then, immediately, “there ensued a crackling of a similar sort, and thereafter everything became and remained quiet.” Nearer to the fall, according to other witnesses, “about 30 seconds after the luminous phenomenon, a great clap of thunder, similar to a cannon-shot close at hand, could be heard; afterwards, single and separate, but less intense, reports followed.”Ibid; page 46 Witnesses also heard a whizzing sound, like that of escaping steam, just before the explosions. Stones fell then over an area 1 mile wide by 7 miles long. The smallest stones were at one end of this oval shape; the largest at the other. Now, imagine yourself at sea aboard a 19th century merchant ship carrying tons of alcohol through what will, in a moment, be the edge of such a cataclysmic storm. Nine red oak barrels have perhaps been leaking the whole trip, such that there may be a noticeable odor of alcohol wafting up from the bilge water below. You are at the compass stand, beside the Captain who is directing the work of crewmates who are in the rigging above, tending sails. Suddenly, there is a great flash of light. You look to the west, toward Saint Mary's Island, and see a fireball and vapor trails in the sky. You hear a series of booms, and then a whizzing of objects streaming by. Something huge that you do not see, traveling near the speed of sound, strikes the ocean and explodes so close that a swell knocks you and the Captain and the compass stand to the deck. The compass shatters. The wave has nearly capsized your ship. A wall of water thrown up by this huge meteoric impact crashes down upon you, drenching everything, flooding even the Captain’s quarters and the galley, where the tilting of the ship and the rush of water dislodges the galley stove. Sailors fall from the rigging. Some fall into the sea or are swept overboard. Someone screams, “Captain! We’re under attack!” Another yells, “Captain! We’ll explode if we’re hit!” The Captain shouts, “Abandon ship!” as he races to his cabin to get his wife and baby. Improbable? Yes. Astronomically so! But it fits the facts like no other theory. It accounts for the decision to abandon ship, and it is coincident with the known occurrence and even the peak of the Andromedids. Furthermore, this same theory can account for the disappearance of the crew. To continue with the scenario: By the time you are in the life boat, the meteor storm has passed, the seas are calm and quiet, and you feel secure, awaiting the approach of what you believe is a human enemy, an attacker who has mistaken his target and who will not harm helpless men, a woman and a baby. But the approaching enemy is not what you’ve imagined. That huge meteorite – the one that nearly capsized and thoroughly drenched your ship – has sent a shock wave under water to the ocean floor and to the volcanic mountain base of Saint Mary’s Island, miles away. The shock wave has now rebounded, and it returns minutes after you abandoned ship. No longer powerful enough to threaten the Mary Celeste, this new surge of water is more than powerful enough to capsize your tiny yawl. The life boat overturns and sinks. Underwater drag snaps the tow line. The Mary Celeste drifts away. Your fate is sealed. Must be the truth But does not this improbable theory suffer a fatal flaw of its own? Why, if such a conflagration actually occurred, was it never reported by the inhabitants of St. Mary’s Island? The island may have been within sight, as close perhaps as 6 miles given the last logged location of the Mary Celeste. Indeed, Captain Williams’ sea quake theory has been criticized for this exact same reason. No earthquake at that time was ever reported by the local residents. Well, the answer to this may be very simple. Unlike an earthquake, a booming, flashing shower of meteorites observed from miles away in cloudy weather would have been utterly indistinguishable from a lightening and thunder storm. Flashes of light may have been observed, followed shortly by a booming that would have seemed like claps of thunder. Unless those on the island happened to observe the streaking and whizzing of nearby meteorites, they would not have thought anything unusual was taking place. They would have seen clouds flashing and assumed it was just another thunderstorm. But to the sailors aboard the Mary Celeste near the “heavy end” of the oval fall, it would have seemed much different. It would have looked, sounded and felt like a war was raging down upon them. An exercise of idle imagination? Not so! Unlike other theories, this one can be tested. If this theory is true, then a dense oval strewn field of meteorites would have extended for miles around the last known position of the ill-fated ship. A few of these meteorites may well have fallen unnoticed onto Saint Mary’s Island. So the island that we know of today as Santa Maria may hold the evidence that can once-and-for-all solve the mystery of the Mary Celeste. A survey of this small island is all that is required. If there is even one meteorite among the rocks there, and if it can be dated (by organic growth perhaps) to around 1872, and if it can then be shown to be of the same stony type as meteorites of the Andromedids (which we know reached a peak on the same day that the Mary Celeste was abandoned), then this theory will have been proven.